"Mongolia is kind of close, right?" Story about an attempt to ski everywhere in the world where there's snow. And in some places where there isn't. On and off-piste skiing on all continents, skiing into craters of live volcanoes, caving, climbing, photography, and travel.

Saturday, March 9, 2019

The Lava Tunnel

We had half a day in Reykjavik, and besides visiting a thermal bath, what could we do? Obviously, visit a cave... a lava tube. Or the Lava Tunnel, few kilometres outside the city (coordinates: N 63.9402 W 21.3971).

This is a very nice, organized setting to view an easy-to-walk-through-but-interesting lava tunnel from 5200 years ago. Additional show caves can be found on this list. And there'd be a great inside-a-dormant-volcano tour also in Reykjavik, but unfortunately that cost 400€ so we decided to skip it.

I also wanted to go out and look for wild caves but we didn't have time for that this time. Apparently, there's at least one near Reykjavik that can be visited. And even the lava fields next to the airport seemed like they are full of interesting holes to peek into. Maybe next time.

The most interesting part was the sinkholes viewed from underneath, with snow falling down to the cave. And the colors and dripping lava forms. Like this:

Ice formations:

Wonderful colours of the lava roofs:

As if the great colors of the cave itself were not enough, there's also artificial light colors:

The gate:

This article has also been published at TGR. Photos and text (c) 2019 by Jari Arkko and Tero Kivinen. All rights reserved. All caving stores can be found from planetcaver.net.